I have heard much about the government using Carnivore to monitor user activity. Is DreamHost planning to, or are now using Carnivore or something like it?
I sent an email to dreamhost that never was replied to on this subject.
Appreciate a response.
Thank you.

Although to be fair, it’s entirely possible that the FBI would go over our heads and install this type of equipment on our upstream providers’ equipment. From what I understand, Carnivore sniffs packets on the network, rather than requiring any installation on our machines.

Also, it’s possible that the person to whom you are sending mail or an intermediary network would be monitored. Basically, though, email is a very insecure protocol. You should not assume that any email you send is not being monitored. Sending an email is often compared to sending a postcard; and that’s basically how you should think of it.

If you’re concerned about email security, you should look into pgp, GnuPG or some other method of encrypting your email.

With a well chosen passphrase and some common sense, these programs provide a fairly high level of security (provided no one is monitoring your keystrokes, which is much easier than decrypting messages for the most part).

The only problem with this is that very few people care enough to learn how to use these technologies. This means that you will have very few people with whom to exchange encrypted email.

At the end of the day, though; if the FBI wanted to install such a system, there’s nothing much Dreamhost can do about it. Thinking of your upstream provider, and their upstream provider and their network, it would be very very difficult to make sure that this was not a part of the network, somewhere?

It definitely would be a problem. There would be no way we could know, authoritively. In theory any service provider could refuse access to the FBI, but I’m not sure if they could if there’s a certain investigation going on (and the events in this country over the last month and a half provide a lot of leverage to get this kind of stuff installed).

In the end, though, EVERYONE has an ‘upstream’ provider in some sense. That’s the nature of the 'net, that everything is interconnected.

The only problem with PGP and GnuPG is that hardly anyone else uses it (and there are so many conflicting standards)… mutt uses PGP/MIME, which is the ‘right’ way to do things, but pretty much no other mailers support this.

I am 100% in agreement with your statements about the current situation of online freedom, although i read an article in the register about some similar legislation in the uk.

It’s a shame that the EFF have lost a lot of their power and coverage amongst net users.

Remember back in 1996, or 1997(?) when Yahoo turned all the background colour of their pages black for the day to raise awareness for the need of freedom of speech on the Internet?

I am with you on your concerns about what the US Government is doing in light of these attacks. I think you’ll find in a few months, or even years that the Government are illegally eavesdropping and surveying people and organizations right now as we speak. I’m sure they will ride something on the back of this Terrorist attack.